This set-up relates to the vertical white “Notepad” button on the Durell toolbar to the right of the white “Spectacles” button, which provides notes for each claim, policy and client (and all other address set records too). There are two types of notes…

“Free-form” notes, if you prefer a single blank page

“Note Lines” with date, time and “Done” markers, if you prefer itemised notes

You may choose to use either, or both, types, which are accessible via the “Notepad” button, whereupon you can switch from one type to the other via the “Show free-form notes” button at the bottom left of the screen, as shown below. The “Set-up” for “Client Notes” establishes which type of notes should appear as your first choice, and also the standard or “default” settings to use (e.g. the number of days before chasing-up).

The white “Notepad” button will change according to the status of that client or policy’s “Note Lines” (though this does not apply to “Free-form” notes), as follows…

A white “Notepad” icon indicates that the client, claim or policy has no “Note Lines”

A yellow “Notepad” icon indicates that the client, claim or policy does have some “Note Lines”

A flashing red “Notepad” icon indicates that the client, claim or policy has some outstanding “Note Lines”

The settings that you enter, as shown below, are just standard or “default” settings for your personal preferences, which may be adjusted during use (e.g. you can default to using “Note Lines” but then for a given client switch to the free form ones). Each other user-name may have different preferences. For example, the user Fred may choose to default to “Free-form” notes while Harry chooses to default to “Note Lines”. To establish a common standard for your entire office you must either set-up each user similarly, or set-up one user according to your preferred office standard, then copy that user’s set-up to all the other user names (see Set-up, Users).

If you select “Note Lines” as your preferred type (recommended) then you can also enter standard settings for the following…

How many days to allow for an action to be completed

Whether the date, time and complete-by fields should be entered automatically (based on today's date & time)

In how many days’ time to create a chase-up diary appointment

At what time to create the chase-up diary appointment (recommend 8:00 a.m. so it proceeds others for the day)

Which diary to use (recommend either the user’s own, or one for a user called “Chase-up”)

Whether or not to automatically update the “Next contact” field (N.B. the last user-definable date field at the bottom right of the Client screen)

Set-up Actions

Each note line can have a standard action associated with it. As a result you can produce analytical reports, such as for how many notes with “Enquiry” actions were created in June. These actions can apply to “All” notes, or if you have a combined Life & General system then you can set-up one set of actions to apply to just “Financial Adviser” while another set applies to just “General Broker”. In any event, to create or edit your note-line standard actions…

Click the “Setup actions” button, shown above

Select the “Insurance type” as “All, “Life” or “General”

to add a new action, type it, then click “Add”

to edit an existing action, select and change it, then click “Change”

to delete an existing action, select it then click “Delete”

Click “Close” when done

Each user-name automatically gets a diary, and you may legally create as many user-names as you like. Hence you can create a user called “Chase-up” in addition to real users such as “Fred”, “Harry”, etc, in order to send all chase-up appointments to a diary so named (see Set-up, Users).